Intro to Data Structures

We’ll start with a quick, non-comprehensive overview of the fundamental data structures in pandas to get you started. The fundamental behavior about data types, indexing, and axis labeling / alignment apply across all of the objects. To get started, import numpy and load pandas into your namespace:

In [1]: import numpy as np
In [2]: import pandas as pd

Here is a basic tenet to keep in mind: data alignment is intrinsic. The link between labels and data will not be broken unless done so explicitly by you.

We’ll give a brief intro to the data structures, then consider all of the broad categories of functionality and methods in separate sections.

Series

Series is a one-dimensional labeled array capable of holding any data type (integers, strings, floating point numbers, Python objects, etc.). The axis labels are collectively referred to as the index. The basic method to create a Series is to call:

>>> s = pd.Series(data, index=index)

Here, data can be many different things:

a Python dict

an ndarray

a scalar value (like 5)

The passed index is a list of axis labels. Thus, this separates into a few cases depending on what data is:

From ndarray

If data is an ndarray, index must be the same length as data. If no index is passed, one will be created having values [0, ..., len(data) - 1].